Skydiver was performing swooping' stunt at Macomb County airstrip

An Oakland County skydiver died Saturday while practicing “swooping,” a thrill-seeking maneuver in which the parachutist creates a high vertical speed and flies horizontal along the ground before landing.

Kenneth R. Bernek, 34, of Waterford Township, died shortly after his 6:22 p.m. jump at a Ray Township airstrip with the Midwest Freefall Sport Parachute Club. He was unable to pull out of his vertical dive and his parachute caught on tree branches, causing him to strike the ground along the graveled Kunstman Road, according to Randy Allison, the club’s general manager.

Bernek, who also was an instructor, was performing a stunt formally known as high-performance canopy piloting, Allison said. A typical practitioner manipulates parachute lines to go faster than normal then flies horizontally for 100 feet or more, he said. Bernek, a 15-year skydiving veteran, ended up about 50 feet from the landing zone.

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“Something happened in the way he set up that prevented him from pulling out of the dive,” he said. “The parachute line on one side snagged some branches that caused him to turn into the ground.

“The parachute he flew in was a very high performance parachute. It’s certainly like driving a sports car.”

A 53-year-old Ray Township woman who stopped along Kunstman on her bicycle to watch skydiving was struck by Bernek and suffered nonlife-threatening injuries.

Allison said the incident has devastated club members.

“It’s a difficult time here at the club; we’re struggling with the loss,” he said. “He really was just one of the nicest people. He was very pleasant person to be around and mentored a lot of people.”

Bernek was married to Kimberly, whom he met at the 60-member club, he said.

After a Saturday night discussion, club members decided to continue skydiving Sunday because that would have been Bernek’s choice, although some members bowed out, he said. The first jump was done in his honor.

“We’ll do a more formal jump in his honor,” he said.

Bernek was in the last of 17 group jumps of the day, Allison said. Bernek was the only one in his group of 16 to jump from 5,000 feet, instead of the typical jump from 14,000 feet, he said. He said Bernek wanted to practice on

Allison was on the same jump.

“I could see something was going on,” he said. “Some of my staff came running over to me and told me what was going on.”

Michigan State Police Lt. Michael Shaw said he will not release the autopsy report until a toxicology report is included.

Allison said he will do an investigation that will be passed on to the U.S. Parachute Association.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday was unable to provide information on the incident or whether the FAA was going to conduct an investigation, Laura J. Brown, an FAA public affairs officer, said in an email.